What's Your Number? - brokeGIRLrich

Hi, friends! Today I have another guest post from my friend Iris who also blogs about her itinerant life as a wife onboard cruise ships over at the Life of Iris. Today she’s sharing some of her money thoughts with us.

What’s your number? No, not that number. What’s the number of dollars/pounds/yen/euros per hour/day/week that you will work for? What’s the number that would make you say yes to a job? What’s the number that would make you say no?

My guess is that it’s dependent upon what the job is, where the job is, who the boss is, who you are working with, how much you need the money, and a whole host of other factors that are either at play consciously or subconsciously.

Tonight at work I really started to debate what my number is. I was waitressing a fill in shift at the restaurant that I’ve worked at for years and it wasn’t very busy. As the night went on I was calculating what I was making per hour – my waitress hourly wage plus my tips. As I was figuring it out – and even adding a little bit in for the fact that they would feed me – I kept thinking, aren’t I worth more than this?

How I was thinking about this was based on a whole bunch of factors:

Is making some amount of money (even if it’s not what you are worth) better than making no money? On a balance sheet, yes. But, then, why does it seem like maybe not?
What else could I be doing with my time? Is whatever else I could be/would be doing worth however much I was going to make? For example, if my grandma wants me to go over to hang out with her and I am only making $11 an hour, is $55 before taxes (for a 5 hour shift) worth missing out on Grandma hang out time? What number is worth it?
This job lets me (even with the new owners) just show up for a few weeks or a month at a time, work some fill in shifts, and then head out without any type of long term commitment. How often does that happen? How much less per hour is fair for me to get to allow for that kind of flexibility? I can’t reasonably expect to make as much as a worker that has a consistent commitment to the business can. How much is that flexibility worth to me?
What amount of money would make it seem worth it? What amount of money do I put my value at per hour in this circumstance? In any circumstance?
Would I work for that same amount doing something I was passionate about? Probably. There’s also a catch to that at some point as well but in general I think that accepting, at least initially, a lower wage at a job you love is easier to mentally deal with.
The bullshit factor: Some nights (like tonight) the bullshit factor was pretty low. But, working in the service industry there are nights that the bullshit factor from the customers, and from the workers is so much it feels like there isn’t an amount of money that would be worth it.
If I had a vested interest, would it be worth it? It’s not like if I work hard I will make my way up the ladder. This is a small restaurant that I don’t plan on putting the time in with the new owners to do that. If you have a vested interest in something you’re more likely to be willing to put in hours at a lower wage for whatever the future benefit might be. For instance, I work on my blog without figuring out what my hourly wage equivalent would be because I have a vested interest – whatever I build it to directly benefits me.
Loyalty: The restaurant recently changed owners. I had worked for the previous owner since high school and he was really like family. A lot of the reason I had kept going back to work there was about wanting to help him out and not just about a paycheck. The new owners are great and super nice but I simply don’t have the loyalty to them that I had to the previous owners. There is a benefit to this though – I am so much better at saying no!

I didn’t come up with an answer to nearly any of these questions over the course of my shift, and during COVID my guess is a lot of people are finding themselves working jobs they couldn’t have imagined working for wages far lower than what their number would normally be, just doing what they can to get by until their normal life starts up again.

The question as to how much you are worth is so loaded and complicated. Whether or not you need to go to work because you need money to pay your bills, buy groceries, pay the rent, to save up for that downpayment, to pay off your house, whatever it is, and you figure out if that job for that amount of money, with whatever amount of bullshit that is at that job will help you get there in a way you’re okay with.

Maybe at that point in your life the ends justify the means. You need the money so you’re going to work even though it’s not great pay and you really don’t like it, because damn it, you’re an adult (adulating is hard, yup) and you’re going to make it through. You see the finish line (or the in-between, making it by and dreaming of tomorrow line) so you’re going to get there. I worked a lot of times with that finish line in mind.

I still don’t know what my number is. I recognize the fact that right now, especially during COVID, I can even have the debate with myself over whether a job is worth it, (when I have a job to come home to) over whether it pays me my number is a sign of the privilege that I have now and the privilege that I have experienced in my life to get me to that point (like being able to live with my mom at various points to save money for the down payment on my house, and then later to rent my house out while traveling to finish paying the house off).

I do know that before the end of my shift the new owners put a little extra in my tip jar and fed me some pizza, and maybe it was because it was an easy shift free from nearly any bullshit, maybe it was because I hadn’t had a paycheck in a long time and it felt good to earn money, whatever it was though, I left feeling like it was worth it.